Did Safety Lapse let Steel Worker sue Employer for Head Injury?

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An employer who intentionally harms an employee can end up facing a personal injury lawsuit despite having worker’s compensation coverage. A case involving a steel mill worker in New Jersey who injured his head shows what it might take to show intent.

The employee worked as a material handler. One day, his supervisor asked him to help unload steel from an open trailer. The trailer contained panels at the back and front but not on the sides. The activity was outside the employee’s usual duties, but the company needed him to help because of a pandemic-related staffing shortage.

At the time of the fall, the company was not using a rollastep, a rolling platform employees could use to get off the truck. He finished unloading the steel and was exiting the platform when he fell and, despite wearing a helmet, injured his head. According to the supervisor, they did not always use the rollastep when they were just unloading a small amount of steel, as was the case here. OSHA later determined that the primary cause of the incident was complacency.

The employee sued the company for personal injury, arguing that the injury resulted from the employer’s intentional failure to use safety equipment. The trial court dismissed the claim based on the exclusive remedy provision of the WCA, and the employee appealed.

Generally, an employee’s sole remedy for a workplace injury is workers’ compensation, leaving most employees unable to gain the much greater monetary damages potentially available through a tort action. An exception applies,however, when the employer intentionally injures the employee. 

In New Jersey, to establish intentional wrong, the employee must show: 

1. The employer knew his actions were substantially certain to result in injury or death to the employee; and
2. The resulting injury and circumstances of its infliction on the employee were: (a) more than a fact of life of industrial employment and (b) plainly beyond anything the WCA was intended to immunize.

Could the materials handler sue employer for personal injury?

A. No. No one had fallen from the trailer before, and the employer's reported complacency was not enough to show it intended the harm.

B. Yes. The employer’s violation of safety rules was enough to establish intent.

If you selected A, you agreed with the court in Little  v. VDM Metals USA, LLC, No. A-0561-24   (N.J. Super. Ct. App. Div. 11/25/25, unpublished), which found insufficient evidence that employer acted intentionally to harm the worker.

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As far as the first element – that the employer knew his actions were substantially certain to result in injury – the court acknowledged that the employer failed to utilize the rollastep during small unloading jobs. However, there was no evidence that employees previously fell while unloading the trailer. Even if the employer knew the failure to use the rollastep created some degree of danger, mere knowledge of a danger does not amount to an intentional wrong.

As to the second element of the intentional wrong exception, the employee didn’t meet that one either. The company’s purported complacency regarding a safety measure was the type of contact meant to fall under the exclusive remedy provision. 

“Further, in the face of an unprecedented, unavoidable staffing shortage resulting from the pandemic, the transfer of [the employee] from his routine function to perform an atypical unloading task from an elevated surface was not so wide of the immunized circumstances subject to the Act's exclusive remedies,” the court said.

It affirmed the trial court’s decision in the employer’s favor.

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